Re MKG Post: #258949
I followed your marrow rum recipe to the letter and have just filled up my demijohn with the liquid but it will only take 1/2kg of sugar. How on earth did you manage 2kg? I am getting just a little bubble but not as much as I wanted it to, obviously because there isn't enough sugar. What should I do now?

This is quite fascinating. As an amateur /home wine and mead maker "marrow rum" looks like a folk way of making a country wine from marrows. Rather than using cultured yeast you allow wild yeast/bacteria to ferment the "must" or juice from the vegetable and the juice (and not water) is the liquid that allows the yeast to transport the sugars in both the vegetable and the brown sugar through the cell walls of the yeast to allow it to convert the sugars into carbon dioxide (the bubbling gas) and alcohol.
Since you are not adding water the syrup will be very dense and the density of the syrup will suggest a wine with potentially a very high alcohol content. Now, typically, yeast need nitrogen and other minerals to build and repair their cell walls and the addition of raisins might provide for some of that. I don't know what minerals are in marrows so it is possible that marrows are rich enough in the sort of chemicals that yeast need BUT I don't know that you can find marrows spontaneously fermenting so I would be a little skeptical about that. Not sure I have ever seen "marrows" in markets here in upstate NY but I have seen large summer squashes (courgettes or zucchinis) and this thread has inspired me to see what a wine made from courgettes might taste like using more .. um.. conventional practices.

A more 'conventional' approach might be to take, say 2 kilo of squash and chop them up. To the squash I would add, say 1 kilo of brown sugar and a little water - say, 2 liters. I would add yeast nutrient (which COULD be - boiled bread yeast, nutritional yeast, or even marmite. There are also lab produced nutrients designed for wine making - for example Fermaid O ) and I would add some wine or beer yeast. I would be looking for a specific gravity of about 1.090 which suggests a wine with a potential level of alcohol of about 12% ABV, so I may need to add a little more water, but I would be looking for a volume of liquid of about 4 liters. This I would allow to ferment in a cloth covered bucket for about 2 weeks or until the specific gravity had dropped to about 1.000 and then I would rack (or transfer by siphoning) the wine off the vegetable and into a clean carboy sealed with a bung and airlock where it would quietly sit for three to six months, to be racked whenever there was a few millimeters of sediment forming on the bottom of the carboy.

Very late, I know, Bernard, but you'd be absolutely correct in what you say. I have been running a one-man campaign for several years in an effort to prevent people from deliberately infecting themselves with strange microbe-y type organisms which would abound in a rotting marrow (the state which a perfectly good marrow stuffed with sugar and left dangling in the open air will quickly achieve) but to no avail.
The only explanation, as far as I can see, is that putrid marrow flesh must contain a strong hallucinogenic substance which is also intensely psychologically addictive. Why else would people insist upon risking their health?

MKG wrote:The only explanation, as far as I can see, is that putrid marrow flesh must contain a strong hallucinogenic substance which is also intensely psychologically addictive. Why else would people insist upon risking their health?

Or, just a theory here, most people dislike marrow, or more specifically marrow-sized courgettes, and hope to get something for nothing, except a bit of sugar. I reckon that hope of getting something for nothing is your psychologically addictive bit.

Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

I'm not sure, GA. I have a sneaking feeling that it's an ongoing challenge - first person to make something really drinkable from a marrow takes the prize. But I worry about the reasoning. There's loads of really decent winemaking ingredients available when marrows start leering at you (and, let's face it, most of the leerers are, as you point out, actually the courgettes you forgot about).
But something just occurred to me. Grapes have a distinct flavour. So do most berries. And apples - they do, too. Lots of pulpy, watery things have flavours worth the attempt to preserve in one way or another. How would we describe the flavour of a marrow? You know - the bit about the flavour which would make you think "Oooooh!!!! I must make a wine from that". I could just about believe it for a really young courgette, but a marrow, it seems to me, isn't much more than a bucket of water with a green skin.

I am looking for that prize coz, I gotta say that I made some marrow wine (based on this discussion) and bottled it a couple (or more) weeks ago. Got three 750 cc bottles and a 350 cc beer bottle of this wine. Beautifully clear. Back sweetened a little and the flavor is quite , quite delicious. Would be more than happy to crack open a bottle at a celebratory meal.
Here's my recipe:
5 lbs of marrow (2 very large courgettes) - cut into 1 inch cubes , seeds included
2.25 lbs of sugar
1 gallon of spring water
47D yeast (1 package)
1/2 t wine nutrient (about 4 times the standard dose)
1 inch of fresh ginger (chopped)
After 10 days the active fermentation had ceased and I added juice of one lemon
Racked into carboy and sealed it with bung and airlock - aged for about 2.5 months.
Three -almost four bottles of very drinkable wine (12% ABV) for next to no money...